The Biggest Speed-Trap Cities in North Texas

Maybe the street was deserted and you decided to open up the throttle. Maybe a tree branch was blocking the flashing school zone sign, or you didn't notice the cop as you rolled through the stop sign.

Whatever the particulars of the situation, practically every driver knows the flush of shame -- and the paroxysm of rage at the cosmic unfairness of traffic enforcement, and the gut-punch of watching a couple hundred dollars disappear from your account -- that come with a traffic ticket.

Those who regularly travel in Southlake or Hurst, or through any number of smaller burgs like Northlake and Pantego, know better than most. Those places top Unfair Park's authoritative list of North Texas' top speed traps.

Our methodology was simple. We gathered traffic citation data from every city in Dallas, Denton, Collin, and Tarrant counties from Texas' Office of Court Administration, which compiles statistics on municipal court cases. McKinney's tally we had to get from the city. We're still waiting for Fort Worth to get back with us, which is why it's not listed.

Then we divided that number by the city's population to get the number of traffic tickets written per capita. Cities with more than 15,000 people are in one list, those with fewer in another, because there's no way Dallas, with 1.2 million people, could match tiny Northlake's torrid 3.42-tickets-per-person pace.

We didn't account for the volume of traffic in any given town, the size of the police force, the presence of red-light cameras, or any number of other variables that could inform the results. Nevertheless, it offers a glimpse of how aggressively towns approach traffic enforcement.

For larger cities, Southlake leads the pack with .73 tickets written per resident, followed by Hurst, Haltom City, Farmers Branch and Euless. Here's the full list:

Head over the page to see the stats for smaller cities in NTX, including one that's issuing 3.43 tickets per resident!

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And this doesn't include crazy tickets like the one I got in Southlake for being parked facing the wrong direction. On a Sunday. In an area used only by vendors for their Oktoberfest (we were vendors).

$111.00.

Southlake is like some one-light hick town in rural Tennessee with one cop, a radar gun and a speed limit that goes abruptly from 65 to 25 at the town limit.

This does not include Red Light Camera citations. Yes, Denton hands out around 30k traffic citations per year and ANOTHER 16k in red light camera tickets ALONE. Total scam. Everyone needs to fight these.

I am interested in gathering some data on the number of
citations issued in Southlake. It would be great to see the number of
warnings issued for Southlake residents, versus non-residents; and then compare that to data showing the
number of citations issued for residents versus non-residents. Southlake PD loves to set up speed traps at the edges of the city limits hoping to catch people leaving or entering the city. Rarely do you see cars set up in the center of the city. Low violent crime rate, agree, but maybe they need to check into the Cocaine/Prescription Drug/Heroin problem at the high school. Worse than any school in the area.

"Mylett is quick to stress that, while Southlake may issue a high number of tickets relative to the population, "officers have tremendous discretion" and that the number of drivers who get off with a warning is "at an all-time high.""

So I'm wondering how many of those warnings are issued to drivers that are residents in the area versus other areas? Ah, so much data to crunch.

The best part of this article is that the tables are graphics, meaning they aren't searchable, so you can't readily find a particular town on there, and the actual data itself will never make it onto google or another search engine.

From the standpoint of a trap, it would be more interesting to know the number of non-resident tickets written. If a place like Krum, for instance, is writing school zone tickets to locals to protect kids, that doesn't really make it a trap. But 2 of the most notorious, Red Oak on I-35 and Fairview on 75, aren't on your list. I would guess that those two ticket a large number of non-residents compared to their populations.

I find it funny and ironic that Anna had one of the lowest rates. In the 80s and early 90s they were notorious as one of the worst speed traps in the state. Raked in hundreds of thousands. But after the Legislature enacted a speed trap law they were bankrupt within a few years.

Where does Westlake fall in on this. Its a small town with a couple of large businesses. When I worked out there some days Keller cops were writing tickets others it was Southlake. And they wrote lots. always parked at the exits of the parking lots pulling over expired regs and inspections weekly

Interesting that Highland Park is near the top 1.25 tickets/capita, but University Park is near the bottom with 0.12. That tells me if I'm driving from the Central to the Tollway, I'm much better off taking Lovers instead of Mockingbird.

A friend got a speeding ticket in Webster, a suburb of Houston. He was 11 miles over the posted limit.

The fine was $1,100. He fought it and lost.

Now, this is anecdotal but he claimed that there is no state limit on what municipalities can charge for speeding tickets. I do not know but he said Webster charges $100 per mile over the posted limit. And there is no grace.

I wonder who charges the most per mile and is there, in fact, no state guideline or reg covering what the fine can be?

Eric, while I applaud your attempt to normalize the data, the most accurate normalizing factor would be per 100,000 vehicle miles. this would compensate for items such as TX114 going through Southlake and Northlake.

Another interesting correlation would be to take the accident rate and see what the relationship is between ticketing rates and accident rates. Is it linear or inverse?

Of course, if you are to drive within the speed limits and commit no other infractions, you won't get ticketed

A good lesson in bad statistics. Traffic or even land area is not proportionate to population. Pantego gives a ticket out (with rounding) every 3900 seconds but Carrollton gives one out approximately every 690 seconds even at a 10 times per person difference approx.

If Carrollton was to even get up to the rate of Highland Park it would require they give one out every 3 minutes 20 seconds CONTINUOUSLY without pause as opposed to the 11.5 minutes per ticket they do now.

That's kind of misleading. Many of those like Irving, HEB, Farmers Branch and Grapevine are pass-through cities where you have a disproportionate amount of traffic versus the actual number of residents.

Guess again. Lovers is a HUGE speed trap for UP, specifically in front of the Petco, the elementary school & the church parking lot Btwn Hillcrest & Boedecker. And a traffic ticket attorney won't go to court in UP because it's worse for their client if they do. Attorney's will tell you to pay the fine and move on if you get tagged in UP.

@grarar Does that also not suggest, what we all know, that these "cities" write tickets not for safety reasons but for financial reasons because their population is too small to support their city government?

Many,many years ago I hit a small child in a school zone. Not my fault because he rode his bike in front of my vehicle. Thank God I was going the school speed limit. He ended up with just a few scratches because I was.I never mind going the school speed limit.

@JohnSmallBerries Good job. I would also like to know the number of officers that issued the citations. Did one cop or 15 account for the number of tickets? The only thing this "list" is good for is knowing how many tickets a city wrote.

@P1Gunter@grarar No. They write tickets because more people speed through Irving than say Wylie. If you sit on 183 or 121, you could catch speeders all day. I don't think they're making up tickets. People speed. When I speed going to work, I'm more likely to get one passing through Irving than around my town getting to the freeway.

@Wilson seriously? school zones are only located by schools, where children will cross the street. So what if school isnt out for 5 more minutes and you passed through when no one was there, does it hurt to drive the speed limit that bad?

@P1Gunter@oractheiii@ScottsMerkinyou're equating location of independents in relation to population density. In my 'burb neighorhood, we have more independents than chains, I mean, if you're not eating at the Starbucks that is. It's ok brah, you go do your thing.

@P1Gunter@tgtg999 I live in East Dallas and am happy that we're finally getting some chains like Liberty Burger and Chipotle. When I want good Asian, I have to bring it in from the suburbs where I work.